You Know Who to Call When the World Ends Again
by Chyme for the Rhyme
Summary: Raven hides and waits. But it is not Robin who comes for her this time, and there is no story to help hoist her up and back into being the hero again. Instead the world trembles, and someone else comes through. No prizes for guessing who.


Raven is small and lost and alone. She has nothing but a story in her head, a picture book with the pages torn through, the binding lost and woven into little cracks that spool out like the lost remnant of thread from a needle.

Nobody needs her, and if somebody did want her, they shouldn't. They should **never** , at all, have to claw and fight, to burn their way through to her in the dark.

And yet, in the crevices that paint the red rock black, something stirs and the lava boils and bubbles, turning into stone and becoming caught between both a wave and a curl. And out beyond the fire, within the rise of temperature, come a light. Then a girl steps through.

Raven thinks she recognises her from some scrap of the story in her head, in a brief flash of nameless yellow and rage and hurt, of love that was only ever partly disguised as hate. This girl, her face caught more entirely in the gloom than in her memory, looks at her as metal falls from her waist, dropping to her ankles like ringlets of tattered paper. To Raven's eyes they resemble fallen cuffs and she turns, memories of the metal she saw clasped over the wrists of people, bad people she has helped stopped, echoed throughout the days and hours now closed to her.

'Hey Raven,' says the girl with a shaky grin, the yellow light leaving her eyes. 'Guess whose team I'm on now?'

Then she bursts out laughing. And it takes a while for her to calm down, to stop shaking. Raven, despite her new height, manages to stand over her as the girl sweats and trembles, caught on her knees as she hunches over for breath.

'Whew,' she says finally, her head turning up so her eyes can look at some point over Raven's shoulder. 'Rough day, huh? I mean, I thought waking up from being a stone statue was bad enough, but let me tell you, rolling out to see everybody else turned into one instead of you, well, that sure puts things into perspective.'

Raven tilts her head to one side.

'My father did that,' she says slowly. 'I didn't want him to. I know I didn't. But he was too much, too big to stop.'

'You had no choice,' the girl breaks in evenly. Her voice has an almost dead sounding quality to it, low and without a stir of emotion. It makes something buzz within Raven's skull, bringing with it a familiarity she tries to chase. She thinks maybe, no, she _knows_ , that her voice was the same once, perhaps an hour ago, or maybe even a century.

Funny,' says the girl, and with a start Raven realises that those eyes, meant to always be blue, are now offset by the light of lava, their colour slanted down into the grey of rock. And then they turn, now brave enough to look right at her. No, not at her, straight _through_ her.

'In fact,' continues the girl, 'it's hilarious. 'Cos I once believed the exact same thing.' She grins wearily. 'But you knew better than that, didn't you? You and Beastboy both. In fact, I bet the whole team knew. You all seemed so put together in a way I don't think I was, or ever could be.'

'Together,' echoes Raven. 'No, I'm not together. I'm lost.'

'Boy, do I know what that feels like,' mutters the girl. 'But you know what I learnt before the whole presto-chango into stone thing? It feels good, real good, taking down the bad guy that destroyed your life.' She finally stands, only a slight tremor passing over the metal sheets that cover her knees. 'What do ya say?' she asks, with a cocky stretch of her smile. 'Do you trust me?'

And something in Raven screams as she takes the other girl's hand, as she is lifted into this dark new sky on a rock with only the glow of yellow to sustain them. Because nothing stands before them, and everything falls as the girl swings her fist, tunnels emerging, punched through by wind, or at least the crushing blow of a teenager's mind. Within seconds, creatures rise from the cave below, strong ghosts of flame without a whisper of intangibility about their forms. But this girl barely looks at them, simply banishing them all under a rockslide with a mere widening of her yellow, yellow eyes.

In response, Raven tightens her grip on the stranger's arm.

'I can't help anyone,' she says. 'My powers...they came from him. The one who did this.'

The other girl snorts. 'Yeah, I used to think something similar. And you know what I did to the person I thought I owed my power too?'

Raven almost shakes her head. But then she is struck by a dizzying barrage of visions. Of a man with a mask for a face, of the line he draws down the centre to divide him from the world, and of the way he fell into fire for daring to do the same to the girl standing before her. And the way that same girl erased it all, with dark waterfalls of rock and the flickering spurt of lava.

'I,' she says, then swallows. ' Yes,' she says, stronger this time. 'I remember. Terra. '

* * *

Terra holds the weight of the world in her hand, stretching the ground beneath Trigon's feet into thin strips that cannot hold him above the line of lava. He curses and struggles, forced to take a bath into the fiery lake that all the books say should be like a second home to him, a bath instead of a death trap.

Meanwhile, in the background, Raven runs, hurries, skidding over stones and slipping round the statues of all the people she couldn't save and still might not, her fingers whisking out to touch the fallen forms of her friends as she finds each of them, slumped into the torn cement. Each time, with a whisk of her fingers against a solitary cape or shoulder or hair, she feels a jolt of black pass through her, nestling back into her soul. All that she gave to protect them and now she is taking it back. Her power. Every last jolt.

In the background, Terra screams and the cracked throne Trigon has made of Titans Tower gives way completely, crumbling down into the orange sea. And the demon curses and sits, lava crowding his feet as he throws red light towards the yellow haloing Terra's form.

But just as she gasps and buckles, another Terra digging her way out from between the widening furrows in her armour, Raven flies forward, her height and hair unfurling back into their old lengths. She takes a moment to breathe, to hover, as her robes become stained by certainty, dyed white with a mere flick of her mind. And then, without a thought, the rest of her flows forward, her hair continuing to grow, trembling past the boundary she has always set for herself and choking off before she becomes a lookalike for Rapunzel.

'Father, ' she hears herself say firmly, 'I want my world back.'

* * *

The world comes back slowly and without fanfare, stone warming and trembling back into the uneven tumble of flesh. The crags and cracks of the building mend, cement flowing like water to fill the gaps as the sky turns blue.

Unlike Terra's eyes. Those fill with grey, with dust instead, and Terra hunches over, a grim twist to her lips as her bones stiffen with mortar. Raven watches her, horrified and feeling entirely stupid.

'I don't...I can't,' she says and for one second feels blind and wretched and wicked, the same way she felt not ten hours ago at the start of this horrible day.

Terra smiles. 'S'kay,' she manages. 'Had a feeling this was gonna happen. Everything has to go back to the way it was before, right? That means I get to become a memorial again. ' She laughs. 'Do me a favour? Make sure you put me somewhere that's just as secure as the last time. If I ever wake up again, I don't want to find dried bird poop in my hair.'

'I... ' Raven doesn't know how to make promises, how to keep them to someone she had once hated, simply because Terra didn't know how to handle the faith people placed in her, like presents.

'No sweat, Raven. You're not like me. For one thing, I know I can trust you.'

One of Terra's eyes closes in a wink, just before the rest of her becomes fossilised. And then even that piece of flesh slides down into a reptilian scale. Raven stares at her for a moment. Behind her she can hear her friends groan, the rest of the team waking up to birdsong and the bustle of streets, streets that now move with colour and speed and all the things now closed off to one of the girls who helped save them.

* * *

Months later, after Terra is gone once again, from her new haunt in the basement of Titans Tower, Raven follows Beastboy's trail and sees him fail again and again, in front of a girl who says she doesn't remember. And at night, after he is gone, Raven slips in and pushes something small and purple into Terra's hand.

'It's not a communicator,' she says sternly. 'It's a phone. Something an ordinary civilian can have. Toss it or trash it and I'll get you a new one. But try and keep it. One thing you've taught me is that everyone needs a lifeline. You gave me one when I needed it and now I'm returning the favour.'

Terra, or whoever she wants to call herself now, stares at her for a moment, eyes carefully blank and blue. Here in the classroom, they shine like inky pools, painted into camouflage against the dusky swirl of the tiled floor and the grey tinted worksheets on the desk.

'Thanks weirdo titan,' she says after a minute as her hand carefully slides around the phone. 'But I don't think I'll be seeing you around.'

'No,' answers Raven with a soft smile. 'But maybe you'll hear from me.'

And, after a second, Terra's own mouth follows into a smile.

* * *

I always found the parallels between Raven and Terra interesting and almost wish we had seen more of it in the series. Both of them struggle with issues of self control and the responsiblity that entails and both are very damaged people who become quite volatile, though perhaps in very different ways, when they are hurt.

I suppose the difference lies in what they choose to surround themselves with. Although perhaps the strict teachings of Azarath served Raven well enough to teach her not to flee from her problems, since I get the feeling that there was no such support structure available for Terra when she was little.

Though how painful must it be for Raven to reflect on the fact that Terra always had a choice in her decision to do wrong, (even if to Terra it did not always feel that way), especially given that the fact that Raven herself was prophetised to have none when she turned sixteen?


End file.
